The use of synthetic control to access crime prevention interventions in Sweden: the case of open drug markets

• In Event: Advances in Quantitative Methods Panel 2: Spatial and Geographic Modeling in Criminology

Abstract

In this study, we report an assessment of a municipality in Sweden that investigated the impact of a program tackling open drug scenes (ODS) from 2018 to 2022. The project aimed to eliminate the open drug trade, prevent youth recruitment into criminal activities, strengthen parental involvement in crime prevention, and offer pathways for young adults to leave criminal groups or cease drug use through a set of social and situational crime prevention measures.To evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions, we use synthetic control method and a set of robustness tests with different crime types to to infer the causal effects of the Program on crime. Synthetic control method constructs a weighted composite of control units, forming a synthetic version of the treated unit to act as a counterfactual. When there is a good fit between the treated unit and the synthetic control before the intervention, by analysing the differences between the actual outcomes of the treated unit and this synthetic control after the intervention, researchers can estimate its causal effect, offering robust and accurate results when randomized experiments are not possible to carry out. In 2023, Osteraker performed better than 82% of all Swedish municipalities for drug-related offense. Our estimates indicate that the Stopp-droghandeln program prevented 589 drug-related offenses, 143 violent crimes, 1,128 property crimes and 1,995 vandalism offenses in the small municipality of the Stockholm metropolitan area. However, there are non-significant p-values that could suggest that the crime reduction occurred by chance. While this could be due to other municipalities implementing their own interventions, the magnitude and consistency of the treatment effects found make it unlikely that these results occurred by chance. To conclude, We will compare the changes in reported crime levels with public perceptions of ODS from answers to a safety survey

Authors

• Vania Ceccato, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

• Marco Antonio Jorge, Federal University of Sergipe

• Gabriel Gliori, KTH Royal Institute of Technology